Sometimes, when the wind blows, the rain lacerates across the acres and the fairways bump the ball around like a pinball machine, it is time to tear up the rankings and look instead for the golfers who know how best to cope. On Sunday, a tubby fellow from Portrush on the coast of Northern Ireland, with a thirst for the black stuff and a liking for fast cars, in his 20th attempt at the Open, did that better than anyone else. Before this championship his ranking was a nice symmetrical 111.

Then glance again at the top 20-ranked players in the world and then the other 19 of the top 20 souls who found a way to manoeuvre the ball round the unforgiving fairways and greens of Royal St George's. There were Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson and Steve Stricker, Americans all. The South African Charl Schwartzel, winner of the Masters this year, was there as well. And Europe? Martin Kaymer, the German and current holder of the USPGA title stood alone.

But this was a championship for the unranked, the unfancied and the non-Europeans. And for the old 'uns, too. Tom Watson, a 61‑year‑old with a pair of new hips, produced perhaps the most celebrated hole-in-one in the game's history and a memorable third round. The winner is 42 years old, Stricker 44, Davis Love III 47, Mickelson 41, and Thomas Bjorn, the Dane, second here last time and in only as a substitute, was fourth this time and is 40.

Of the expected European challengers there was little sign. The world's No1 and No2 players, Luke Donald and Lee Westwood, failed to make the cut, while the brouhaha surrounding Rory McIlroy proved just that when it came to unfamiliar conditions. As one commentator put it, he played US Open golf on an Open Championship course in Open Championship conditions, and has a way to go. Instead, beyond Clarke, Kaymer and Bjorn, the European flag was carried by Sergio García, Simon Dyson, the sole England challengerin a championship where the hope was for an English winner on an English course, Raphaël Jacquelin, and Freddie Jacobson. Half of the top 20 are Americans.

Yet beyond the lessons handed out by the old hands, there were some who have taken them on board and embraced the cultural change that is required to conquer the most demanding links courses in extreme conditions. On Sunday was one where some young guns, Americans all, showed their mettle. Johnson, in second place overnight, and with the week's other ace in the first round, had to be carried along in the slipstream of goodwill that was propelling Clarke to his destiny.

For 13 and a half holes, he was challenging Clarke with a figure that, had he parred his way in, would have seen him in a play-off. Instead, from the 14th fairway, with a wicked crosswind from left to right, he carved his second shot to the par five away to the right and out of bounds over the fence that separates St George's from its neighbouring links, Prince's. It was probably the ultimate defining moment of the week: it gave Clarke a clear run-in with a margin for error. Johnson is 27 years old, a Ryder Cup player already, and now an Open Championship contender.

He, though, is the elder statesman, for there, peas in a pod in joint fifth, were another pair of Ryder Cup players, Anthony Kim, 26, and Rickie Fowler, who is 22 and inevitably throughout the week had to endure shouts from a thousand would-be Biancas without quite knowing why, which must have been unnerving. Fowler, never a winner as a professional but making the US Ryder Cup team in his rookie year, produced one of the rounds of the championship, two under par, on the third day to put himself in contention and shrugged off a history of duff final-round efforts to hammer out a staccato of pars in Bjorn's company, until dropping shots at the 14th and 16th.

It had been, he said afterwards, "fun", although all American golfers seem to say that ever since Tiger started using the word. But bedraggled as he looked at times, he seemed like he genuinely did have fun. He might have holed some more putts yesterday (but what golfer ever believes he has holed enough) but knows he has the game now, the shots and the imagination, to win this title one day. Level par over the course of the weekend, in those conditions, is a monumental effort for a golfer in his professional infancy.

Kim, on the other hand, is in his fifth season as a professional, and has three PGA tour wins to his credit. As with Fowler, he produced a level‑par performance over the weekend, two rounds of 70, to ensure that he will be at Royal Lytham and St Annes next summer. He was able to feel the buzz that surrounds a champion golfer, Mickelson, when he gets on a roll and the crowd react. "I think I know who they were rooting for," he mused. Maybe one day.